Nay Shwe Thway Aung

Nay Shwe Thway Aung (Burmese: နေရွှေသွေးအောင်, also known as Phoe La Pyae (Burmese: ဖိုးလပြည့်; lit. 'Full Moon'); born 22 May 1991) is a Burmese public figure and a business tycoon,[1] who is the grandson of Senior General Than Shwe, Myanmar's dictator and former head of a military junta. He is one of the country's top business tycoons in the list of individuals who provide political and financial support for Myanmar's ruling regime and government.[2][3][4][5][6]

Nay Shwe Thway Aung
Born (1991-05-22) 22 May 1991
Yangon, Myanmar
NationalityBurmese
Other namesPhoe La Pyae
OccupationBusiness tycoon
Height1.78 m (5 ft 10 in)
Parent(s)Nay Soe Maung
Kyi Kyi Shwe
Relatives

Early life and family

Nay Shwe Thway Aung was born in Yangon, Myanmar,[7] as the sole son of Nay Soe Maung, an army doctor, and his wife Kyi Kyi Shwe, a daughter of Than Shwe. He attended high school at Practising School Yangon Institute of Education and enrolled in West Yangon Technological University.[8][9][10]

Business holding

Nay Shwe Thway Aung is a major broker between the regime officials and business leaders.[11] He has earned a reputation as one of the most notorious members of the ruling family. He has been accused of ordering military officers, serving as his assistants, to carry out attacks on business rivals, and even top generals are said to be wary of displeasing him.[12]

He has been involved in several business disputes with the sons of other top generals, including Aung Thet Mann, Toe Naing Mann and Shwe Mann. However, they always have to concede to Nay Shwe Thway Aung eventually.

He also has close ties to key figures such as business tycoon Zaw Zaw. Through their relationships, Zaw Zaw has won concessions and import licenses, including most of the country's car and motorcycle imports licenses, as well as import and distribution licenses for fuel.[13]

According to business sources in Yangon, Nay Shwe Thway Aung took a new Mercedes Benz from a warehouse of the military-owned Union of Myanmar Economic Holding, Ltd (UMEHL), paying just 10 million kyat (US$11,600) for a luxury vehicle valued at least 200 million kyat ($230,000) in Burma.[12]

Political ambitions

According to The Irrawaddy report from Naypyidaw, several military officers dislike him because he has assumed a high rank within the Myanmar military circles despite the fact that he has never served in the army. Displeasure was also expressed by the military elite that he was permitted to sit in the front row beside his grandfather at official photoshoots.[13]

He has often appeared in Myanmar's state-run media alongside his dictator-grandfather at state ceremonies and diplomatic tours of inspection throughout the country.[14][15]

He was also implicated in a drug scandal in Yangon in 2009. Two of his friends, business tycoon Maung Weik and a son of Lt-Gen Ye Myint, Aung Zaw Ye Myint, were arrested.[16]

In 2010, Nay Shwe Thway Aung had run Yadanabon Cyber City, Myanmar's Silicon Valley and the government's Internet control center.[17][18][19]

He was thought to be lined uptake over from his grandfather, Than Shwe, and take a leadership position within Myanmar's government.[20][21][22]

On his 20th Birthday, Nay Shwe Thway Aung said, "I will not succeed ruling authority from my grandfather Than Shwe."[23] In 2011, Than Shwe officially stepped down as head of state in favour of his hand-picked successor, Thein Sein to President of Burma.

On 4 December 2015, Nay Shwe Thway Aung and his grandfather Than Shwe met with Aung San Suu Kyi, he pledged to support her if she continues to work for the development of the country.[24][25][26][27][28]

On 22 October 2016, Nay Shwe Thway Aung attended the state-level meeting between State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and 158 country's top-listed taxpayers and cronies.[29]

Music career

Nay Shwe Thway Aung has made music videos and sung cover songs of Enrique Iglesias.[30] On 8 November 2018, he released a cover song of "Tonight (I'm Lovin' You)" on his Facebook, which racked up one million views within 24 hours. On 27 December 2018, he released a cover of Enrique Iglesias's "Hero" on his Facebook page. In this cover, he combined Burmese lyrics to the song.[31]

He performed in the national level event Miss Universe Myanmar 2019.[32][33]

Controversies

Nay Shwe Thway Aung was at the center of a scandal in his teenage years when rumors spread that he was involved with certain Burmese celebrities and models.[16]

References
  1. "Partial List of Cronies Who Provide Political and Financial Support for Burma's Ruling Regime; Prepared by Aung Din, U.S. Campaign for Burma, June 2011/Nay Shwe Thway Aung No.28" (PDF). burmapartnership.org. Retrieved 12 October 2017.
  2. "Senior General's Grandson Orders Attack on Business Rival". The Irrawaddy. 21 December 2010.
  3. "Than Shwe’s Grandson: Geek, Playboy or Gangster?". The Irrawaddy. 23 September 2009.
  4. "What a signed banknote tells us about Myanmar's next leadership". BBC News. 7 December 2015.
  5. "Rumours of model and Than Shwe's grandson eloping untrue". The Myanmar Times. 11 July 2013.
  6. "Burmese Media Lead with Than Shwe's Favorites". The Irrawaddy. 14 December 2009.
  7. "Burmese dictator". Myanmar Image.
  8. "University Privileges Granted to Than Shwe's Grandson". The Irrawaddy. 9 January 2008.
  9. Rogers, Benedict (May 2010). "Than Shwe: Unmasking Burma's Tyrant". Than Shwe: Unmasking Burma’s Tyrant-Google Book. ISBN 9781628404791.
  10. "Publisher Sidelines CEO Who Alleged Threats by Than Shwe's Grandson". The Irrawaddy. 21 October 2013.
  11. "Privatization Linked to Money Laundering". The Irrawaddy. 23 March 2011.
  12. Wai Moe (23 December 2010). "Than Shwe's Son-in-law Named Ambassador to China". The Irrawaddy.
  13. Moe, Wai (14 March 2011). "Jealousies Divide 'United' Junta". The Irrawaddy.
  14. "Did Than Shwe's Grandson Kidnap Model?". The Irrawaddy. 8 January 2009.
  15. "Grandson's Lavish Party Foretells Future of Than Shwe". The Irrawaddy. 2 June 2007.
  16. "Than Shwe's Grandson Appears With Burma's New Miss Universe". The Irrawaddy. 7 October 2013.
  17. Moe, Wai; Paquette, David (March 2010). "The Coming Cyber War: The Young Pretender". The Irrawaddy.
  18. "Pyin Oo Lwin: The Generals' Silicon Fortress". The Irrawaddy. 13 March 2010.
  19. Parry, Richard Lloyd (7 December 2010). "Burma general planned to buy Manchester United". The Times.
  20. "Than Shwe's Granddaughter Celebrates 4th Birthday with Rangoon Elite". The Irrawaddy. 8 December 2010.
  21. "ဖိုးလပြည့် (ခ) နေရွှေသွေးအောင် ပြောတဲ့ သူနဲ့သူ၏မေမေအကြောင်း". Cele Kabar (in Burmese). 20 April 2018. Retrieved 30 April 2018.
  22. "Myanmar's "Big State Secret"" (PDF). Global Witness. Retrieved 5 April 2018.
  23. "နေရွှေသွေးအောင် အကြောင်း". The Irrawaddy (in Burmese). 16 November 2011. Retrieved 30 April 2018.
  24. "ဒေါ်အောင်ဆန်းစုကြည်၊ ဖိုးလပြည့်နဲ့ သတင်းမီဒီယာ လောက". Mizzima News. 20 November 2015.
  25. "တိုင်းပြည်အတွက် ကျရာကဏ္ဍက ကူညီမယ်လို့ ဖိုးလပြည့်ပြော". Mizzima News. 26 November 2015.
  26. "President Aung San Suu Kyi? Probably Not Yet". cogitAsia. 15 December 2015.
  27. "ဖိုးလပြည့်နှင့် တွေ့ဆုံခဲ့ဟု ဒေါ်အောင်ဆန်းစုကြည် အတည်ပြု". Mizzima News. 26 November 2015.
  28. "Grandson of ex-dictator snr-gen Than Shwe has met Daw Aung San Suu Kyi". Democracy for burma.
  29. "Business Community Casts Optimistic Eye to the Future". The Irrawaddy. 26 October 2016.
  30. "The grandson of notorious dictator Than Shwe is making Enrique Iglesias music videos". Coconuts Media. 27 April 2016.
  31. "အလန်းစားရိုက်ချက်များဖြင့် နေရွှေသွေးအောင်၊ သင်ဇာဝင့်ကျော်တို့ ပါသည့် ကာဗာသီချင်း (ရုပ်သံ)". Democratic Voice of Burma (in Burmese). 9 November 2018.
  32. "MUM 2019 Official Announcement". Miss Universe Myanmar.
  33. Limited, Bangkok Post Public Company (7 June 2019). "Reflection of a budding country". Bangkok Post.
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